An interview on The PA Report talks with Valve's Gabe Newell, discussing some general topics with Valve's Managing Director, whose beard is growing in nicely (though not to the magnificent degree mine has at this point). The discussion covers things like his work schedule, his fascination with wearable computers, the possibility Valve might someday sell hardware, pricing games on Steamand more (thanks nin). He also offers responses to questions about to what degree customers won games purchased on Steam:

But even from kind of a more general point of view, you have services like Steam or Origin where these many purchases and micro-transactions and all these transactions weíre making through multiple companies are kind of tied to this overreaching account. Do you have lawyers who kind of look at the legal implication of where exactly you fit into that relationship?

Yeah, we have lawyers who look at stuff all the time, Iím not sure Iím answering your question directly. Itís sort of like this kind of messy issue, and it doesnít really matter a whole lot what the legal issues are, the real thing is that you have to make your customers happy at the end of the day and if youíre not doing that it doesnít really matter what you think about various supreme court decisions or EU decisions. If youíre not making your customers happy youíre doing something stupid and we certainly always want to make our customers happy. And I think we have a track record of having done that.

Beamer wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 12:36:I'm not saying this at all (though I believe EA said that the forum ban game ban connection was a mistake.) I'm saying Valve does essentially the same thing. Valve has removed user accounts. That takes away games people bought. That means people do not own the games they buy on Steam.

So Valve essentially does what EA does, only EA says they do it and Valve gives non-answers and avoids the question.

Yeah EA claimed that, and claimed they wouldn't do it again, then they went and did it again (and not just once). There's even been bluesnews stuff about it. Valve does NOT do the same thing, they don't ban you playing games for forum posts. They may remove access to your games, but its not because of posting on their forums. Also, EA does NOT say they remove games because of forum posts.

However, both EA and valve have in their EULA they may remove game access.

Who cares in this discussion?Gabe gives an answer that makes Valve sound different. Valve is not different. Valve will happily remove your games. For a forum post? No. But they weren't asked about forum posts, they were asked about game ownership, and said they do what makes customers happy.

This isn't true. You pretty clearly do not own games purchased over Steam.